November 21, 2016 Look No Work Today By Dan Piepenbring “No Work Today,” an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculptures by the Dutch artist Parra, is on display at Joshua Liner Gallery through December 17. Parra is, to my knowledge, the only professional artist who has also been a professional skateboarder. Parra, No Work Today, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 55″ x 39″. Read More
November 14, 2016 Look Classic Attitude By Dan Piepenbring “Classic Attitude,” an exhibition of Helen Lundeberg’s sixties-era abstract paintings, is at Cristin Tierney Gallery through December 17. Lundeberg, who died in 1999, was a pivotal figure in the West Coast abstract circle. “By classicism I mean, not traditionalism of any sort, but a highly conscious concern with aesthetic structure,” she wrote in a statement accompanying her show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1942. “My aim, realized or not, is to calculate, and reconsider, every element in a painting with regard to its function in the whole organization. That, I believe, is the classic attitude.” Helen Lundeberg, Sunny Corridor, 1959, oil on canvas, 20″ x 24″. © The Feitelson / Lundeberg Art Foundation Read More
November 7, 2016 Look It Was Just This Moment By Dan Piepenbring Katharina Wulff’s exhibition “It Was Just This Moment” is at Greene Naftali Gallery in New York through December 23. Her latest large-scale paintings depict her community in Marrakech, portraying crowded gyms and a hotel lobby. “The free and somewhat anarchistic way people interact here is one of the many things I find really interesting about Morocco,” she said in 2012. “In Europe there’s practically no real communication anymore.” Katharina Wulff, Untitled, 2016, oil on canvas, 46 3/4″ x 37 5/8″ Read More
November 2, 2016 Look Pleasures of the Dance By Dan Piepenbring Jesse Mockrin’s exhibition “Pleasures of Dance” opens tonight at New York’s Nathalie Karg Gallery; her work is on display through December 18. Mockrin’s paintings borrow liberally, and often directly, from the late Baroque period; her work is people with androgynes in rococo dress. “I think one of the things that drew me to Rococo is the fluidity of gender,” Mockrin told T Magazine earlier this year. “It’s that slippage.” In an essay accompanying the exhibition, Edward Sterrett writes, “No one has asked with such insistent perspicacity why it is that in the painting of the high rococo, such a convoluted profusion of voluminous taffeta, of patterned damask, of coy, porcelanite thighs, is punctuated with a seemingly endless series of little side tables, shelves, and ottomans, jabbing awkwardly into the geometry of the room, tilting it outward so that the stray ribbon or rose that inevitably spill off their edges, appear as though tumbling off the pages of an open book.” English Tea, 2016, oil on linen, 37″ x 25″ Read More
October 31, 2016 Look Light and Dark By Dan Piepenbring Marcos Bontempo’s exhibition “Light and Dark” is at Ricco Maresca Gallery in New York through November 26. Bontempo lives and works in Andalusia; he paints on the floor using ink and salt on paper, which he prefers to canvas. “The shapes express the poor reality, the mutilation of an ill body that does not want to be forgotten by God,” he’s said of his abstracted human forms, often depicted in extremis. “I do not let them alone in their ordeal … I think I am a schizophrenic.” Marcos Bontempo, Untitled, 2016, ink and salt on paper, 25.5″ x 19.5″. Read More
October 24, 2016 Look Pandemic Pentameter By Dan Piepenbring Trenton Doyle Hancock’s exhibition “Pandemic Pentameter” is at James Cohan Gallery in New York through November 27. Hancock grew up in East Texas, in a deeply Christian family. “I’ve developed a perspective over the way that I grew up, the whole Christian background thing,” he told Artpulse in 2012. “I think about what are the good things that I could take from that rigor or that lifestyle and incorporate it into my studio practice. I think there’s still a little bit of residue left over. I don’t want to say guilt, but maybe the fear that’s a deep Southern Baptist, black Baptist thing. It’s definitely not guilt-based, it’s more fear-based. I think there’s something interesting to be said about making a painting that you can fear for yourself for having made it.” Trenton Doyle Hancock, Becoming the Toymaker, Phase 5 of 41, 2016, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 40″ x 30″ x 3″. Read More